SORTRONOMY

Drop in a folder, get a clean library

After a night of imaging, your capture software leaves you one giant folder of cryptically named files. Sortronomy is a small command-line wizard that reads what your camera recorded inside each photo and copies every frame into a clean, processing-ready library — by camera, target, date, and filter. Entirely offline, and it never touches your originals.

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Demo · Walkthrough00:29

sortronomy — walkthrough Demo

CLI

Cross-platform

100%

Offline

FITS

Header-based

ZERO

Config needed

Section · 01

What Sortronomy is

The longer story

Every capture app — ASIAIR, N.I.N.A., SharpCap, and the rest — dumps a night’s work into one folder of files with names like Light_0042.fit. Weeks later it’s hard to say which frames belong to which target, filter, or night. Sortronomy fixes that in one run: point it at the messy folder and it reads the details your gear recorded inside each file — camera, target, capture time, filter — and copies every frame into a tidy, processing-ready tree. Lights are grouped under their target; darks, flats, and bias frames get their own calibration area.

It’s built to be safe to try: originals are copied, never moved or renamed in place, and a dry run builds the full folder structure before a single file is written. Everything happens on your machine — no account, no upload, no telemetry.

“Completely offline — your data never leaves your computer.”

Section · 02

FEATURES

06 CAPABILITIES

Works with your capture software

ASIAIR, N.I.N.A., SharpCap, Ekos / KStars, SGP, Voyager, APT — all supported out of the box, with zero setup. If it writes standard files, Sortronomy sorts them.

Sorts from the photo, not the filename

Sortronomy reads the details your gear recorded into every shot — and folds different spellings of the same camera into one name — so files land in the right place even when their names are a mess.

Copies, never moves

Your originals stay exactly where they are. The organised library is built from copies, and re-running only fills in what’s missing.

Dry run first

Preview the entire folder tree before a single file is copied — inspect it in Finder or Explorer, then run for real.

Session-aware dates

Shots taken after dark roll into that night’s folder, so a single session never gets split across two dates — even past midnight.

Fully offline

No account, no uploads, no telemetry. Everything runs on your machine — nothing ever leaves your computer.

Section · 03

HOW IT WORKS

03 STEPS

Three steps from a messy capture folder to a clean library — one small program, no account, nothing uploaded.

Install the CLI

One command installs the right build for your system — a single small binary, nothing else. It verifies the download and puts sortronomy on your PATH.

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/sidthesloth92/db-astro-suite/main/tools/sortronomy/scripts/install.sh | sh

Prefer a manual install? Grab a binary from the releases page.

terminal — install

$ curl -fsSL …/install.sh | sh
  ↓ sortronomy v0.0.1 · darwin/arm64
  ✓ checksum verified
  ✓ installed to ~/.local/bin/sortronomy

$ sortronomy --version
sortronomy v0.0.1

Run the wizard

Type sortronomy and answer a few questions — where your captures are, where the library should go, and how to group it (focal length, date, filter, imaging session). A review screen confirms everything before anything runs, and a dry run creates the folders without copying a single file. One-shot-colour rig? Tag a filter once and every frame gets labelled.

sortronomy

terminal — sortronomy

$ sortronomy
? Input folder     ~/Captures
? Output folder    ~/Astro Library
? Group by focal length   Yes
? Group by date           Yes
? Group by filter         Yes

Review
▸ Execute
  Dry run — create folders only
  Go back and edit
  Cancel

Get a clean library

Confirm, and every frame is copied into place — camera, focal length, target, session date, filter — with calibration frames in their own area. Your originals are never moved or renamed. Re-run it any time: existing files are left alone and only what's missing is filled in.

~/Astro Library

~/Astro Library/
├─ ASI2600MM Pro/
│  └─ 530mm/
│     └─ M31/
│        └─ 2026-05-28/
│           ├─ Ha/    48 lights
│           ├─ OIII/  36 lights
│           └─ SII/   36 lights
└─ Calibration/
   ├─ Darks/   40
   ├─ Flats/   30
   └─ Bias/    50

Section · 04

Before and after

Folder structure

Before — raw dump

~/Captures (before)

~/Captures/
├─ 2026-05-28_2130_Light_120s.fit
├─ 2026-05-28_2132_Light_120s.fit
├─ 2026-05-28_2134_Light_120s.fit
├─ Light_0001.fit
├─ Light_0002.fit
├─ M31_Ha_300s.fit
├─ ASI2600_NGC7000.fit
├─ Dark_-10C_120s.fit
├─ Flat_Ha_001.fit
├─ Bias_0001.fit
└─ … 1,274 more frames

After — organised tree

~/Organised (after)

~/Organised/
├─ ASI2600MM Pro/  (mono camera)
│  └─ 530mm/  (focal length)
│     └─ M31/  (target)
│        └─ 2026-05-28/  (session date)
│           ├─ Ha/    48 lights  (one folder per filter)
│           ├─ OIII/  36 lights
│           └─ SII/   36 lights
├─ ASI2600MC Pro/  (one-shot colour)
│  └─ 250mm/
│     └─ Veil Nebula/
│        └─ 2026-05-30/
│           └─ OSC · L-eXtreme/  42  (filter tagged)
├─ ASI183MM/  (second rig, normalised)
│  └─ 1000mm/
│     └─ Jupiter/
│        └─ 2026-05-31/
│           └─ L/    900 frames
└─ Calibration/  (grouped by frame type)
   ├─ Darks/   40
   ├─ Flats/   30
   └─ Bias/    50

A raw capture dump on the left; the same frames sorted by camera, focal length, target, session date, and filter on the right — mono rigs get one folder per filter, one-shot-colour rigs a single tagged folder.

Ready

Bring order to your FITS captures

Open source · Offline · Cross-platform CLI

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